The challenges facing teacher unions in Lebanon and their role in education reform -

Abstract

In Lebanon, teacher unions have been linked to strikes and have been seen as fighting only for their members’ self-interest and as not being concerned about issues of educational quality issues. In addition, teacher unions are currently perceived to be highly politicized as political and sectarian groups have influenced them and their decisions and have shifted their focus away from advocating for teachers’ needs and from other important educational matters. You need a linking sentence here to move from the negative. For example, however, there is no documented research that negates these perceptions of teacher unions or that examines the perspectives of the union members on the role their unions have played and can play in the improvement of the quality in education. Linking sentence needed here to introduce methodology and why this methodology was chosen. This study utilizes a qualitative research design and specifically a grounded theory approach that investigate from the union leaders’ and union members’ perspectives about: 1) the function or primary purpose of teacher unions 2) challenges facing teacher unions today, and 3) the role of union in education reform. The study also conducts a comparative analysis to bring about an understanding of the different perspectives of the groups (union leaders, active union members, and inactive union members) and to assess whether an alignment exists amongst them. In-depth individual interviews, formal field interviews, and focus group interviews were used to collect data from 17 public school union leaders and 21 teachers who are active (12) and inactive (9) in the public school unions. Findings of this study revealed that the three groups (union leaders, active union members, and inactive union members) believed that the primary purpose of teacher unions is to protect teachers’ rights, improve educational services, and voice teachers’ concerns. As for the challenges facing teacher unions in Lebanon, most of the participants in the